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THE DAGGER AFFAIR The criminal/terrorist group THRUSH is revealed to have been originated in 1895 by a group of survivors of the first Professor Moriarty’s crime organization after his apparent death in 1891. THRUSH leader Ward Baldwin relates his involvement in outwitting a freelance spy named Kosloff to procure a poison gas back in 1921. Upon laying eyes upon the unwieldy Energy Damper weapon, U.N.C.L.E. agent Napoleon Solo reflects, “A weapon to destroy ten thousand years of human development—or half a billion years of evolution—should be sleek and polished, bright and deadly.... A glittering crystal of ice-nine.”

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. novel #4 by David McDaniel, Ace Books, 1965. It is probable that Moriarty’s brother, the second Professor Moriarty, controlled this criminal organization, which originally could have been called the Circle of Life. See the entry under The Second War of the Worlds for information on the Circle of Life. The incident with the poison gas and Kosloff is likely a reference to the 1925 serial Lightning Hutch. Ice-nine is from the Kurt Vonnegut novel Cat’s Cradle; it is a weapon of mass destruction which raises the melting point of ice to 114.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently Philip José Farmer enjoyed The Man From U.N.C.L.E. series, as he wrote a letter printed in the December 1972 issue of The Baker Street Journal in which he praised several articles on U.N.C.L.E.

The UNCLE novels, esp those by McDaniel, are packed with crossovers--as you'll see when you get the book. :-)

Win Scott Eckert

The Lord of the Jungle returns to the Earth’s core on a mission to stop the Nazis from obtaining a powerful superweapon. But when the ape-man’s murderous adversaries partner with Pellucidar’s routed reptilian overlords, can Tarzan prevent the conquest and enslavement of all humanity in both the inner and outer worlds?